Twelve Leagues
by Silver Pard
Summary: There are twelve leagues in a song of binding.


Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII does not belong to me, and the 'Twelve Leagues' thing is swiped from 'A Sorcerer's Treason' by Sarah Zettel.

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**Twelve leagues you walk from me**

He's never been strong enough to ignore their pleading and just walk away. He hates them for this sometimes, briefly, and it brings him comfort, though it also makes him feel like a child, hugging a photograph of their favourite toy because the real thing is on too high a shelf.

_When he first heard the name he assumed its owner was weak and dismissed him as unimportant. He forgot that clouds are the bearers of storms._

**Eleven leagues you hear my voice**

Sephiroth's voice when speaking to him in madness had always had the lilt of a seducer, but beneath it Cloud could hear the power, the insanity and fury everyone else heard. It never stopped him listening, never stopped him falling in the honey trap, but it reminded him the sweetness was hollow and would devour him.

_He likes the way Cloud says his name when he chases after him. When Cloud remains cool and detached and can stare him down as he says it, he remembers to make it scornful and contemptuous; it makes him feel cheated, because he knows he should be worshipped, and that's the note he hears when Cloud forgets himself._

**Ten leagues you feel my touch**

He doesn't actually know what the touch of those long fingers would feel like. Sephiroth never touches him, not even in anger; it's the one line he will not cross. He knows Sephiroth's features and voice better than anyone else's alive, knows his scent, which clings to him sometimes when he wakes from nightmares, can sometimes taste that smell on his tongue, but this he does not know. He knows Sephiroth's touch in his mind, but everything else from a hand on his shoulder to a fist in his gut is the thought and memory of someone else.

When Sephiroth puts his weight behind his shoulder and slams into him near the end of their fight, it drives the air out of his lungs. It's not the contact that makes him stumble and stagger like a crippled foal, it's the fact it happened in the first place – Sephiroth doesn't touch him, never touches him, and though a small voice of calm is telling him that this isn't the real thing, only a piece of Sephiroth, a configured remnant, Cloud feels as if the ground has suddenly become sky, as if his entire world is crashing down, because the laws governing their engagement have suddenly changed and he doesn't know the new rules.

_Cloud's life is a maze of mischance, a labyrinth of crossroads and wrong choices; his mind is a complex web with entire sections torn away, and Sephiroth waits in the centre of both, as he does in all things. He watches as Cloud weaves his entire existence around him; sometimes he controls the threads, and sometimes he is lost in them._

_No matter how lost he is Cloud always finds him. All he has to do is close his eyes and feel the way._

**Nine leagues you know my bond**

It is the smallest of chains that have the most power. The first link in the chain that binds them is a childish wish, worth less than the air it took to form it out loud. It should be nothing to break; yet stronger, new-woven loops of steel hate snap as brittle as ice rather than this single knot of silk.

_He can't understand why, no matter how hard he tries, he just can't kill him. He hopes when he succeeds he'll feel joy, but suspects it will feel more as if he has torn a vital piece of himself away._

**Eight leagues you rebel from me**

When Sephiroth calls him by his name, Cloud hears the word _mine_ in it, hears the word _puppet_, the word _weak_. When he says Sephiroth's name he forces as much contempt in it as he can, tries to make it say _betrayer_, make it say _fallen_, make it say _weaker_. He doesn't know if it works, but the small defiance brings a little comfort.

"_I will never be a memory."_

**Seven leagues you hide from me**

Once, Cloud deluded himself he could hide from who he was. He filled the void of himself with the shards of other people, but against his own jagged edges they wore smooth and vanished, leaving him with nothing, and when he could no longer craft this armour of strangers and friends he tried to hide in the city, in the crowds, telling himself he was one among many and would not be found.

His eyes are too bright; they are too old, too tired and empty. The swords are too large to let him pass without comment, his hair too wild and his bearing too odd; he might as well wave a giant placard declaring 'Here I am, come get me!'

Even one among many he is too unnatural to hide.

_They play the largest game of hide-and-seek that has ever been played, vanishing and reappearing from town to town and continent to continent, searching for each other all over the world and off it, through life and beyond death. _

_Sephiroth likes hiding, both because he likes how paranoid and fretful it makes Cloud, not knowing where he is, and because really, Cloud is no good at it._

**Six leagues you deny me**

No matter how many times he said it, he could never convince himself he could have turned away at some point, settled down, be normal, be content, so he's not surprised the others don't believe him.

_At the last he waits alone. There is no one else with him in this place._

**Five leagues you remember me**

Cloud divides his life by Sephiroth's presence in it. He only knows he existed before the wish at the well because Tifa tells him so, and because somewhere in his mind there is a path and a small boy that tells him when he was eight something important happened.

The two years between the wish and the death of the wish are blanks, sometimes interspersed with glimpses of silver hair and a straight back, always walking away. The five years between his death and the birth of his new life are mists of green and the echoes of screams. He knows it was five years because they told him so and the calendars corroborate this knowledge, but sometimes he doesn't believe it. Between taking Zack's psyche and seeing President ShinRa pinned to his desk like a butterfly is fluid and shifting, a reality he remembers because he has others to help him. Seeing the sword brings everything into focus, gives days and weeks and months meaning again.

The years without are nothing but numbers while he waits.

_Memories are fragile butterflies he crushes between his fingers in moments of pain. Yet of all the things he has forgotten or lost serving Mother – honour, sanity, brilliance, morals, self – he has never needed reminding of his nemesis' face._

**Four leagues you hear me**

The important things have never been what Sephiroth said they were; they've always been in the smile he gives when Cloud falters and falls.

_In the silent meeting places of dreams they can talk to each other like equals, but when they meet again in the waking world they still speak as master and puppet. There's no point in listening to what the boy says in those moments – his words can lie, and lie spectacularly well, but he has never learnt the art of lying with his body. It's the way his eyes widen, the way he stares, the way he holds his sword low, open to his words, the way he doesn't fight like Sephiroth so obviously knows he could, it's all these things and more that tell him he isn't ready to be freed. _

_He spends all his time in dreams these days, soothed by the lullaby of his companion's voice._

**Three leagues you turn to me**

When he fled the support of his friends and makeshift family he told himself he could and would fight the Geostigma alone, that there was no need for them to watch and feel helpless as he began to noticeably fall apart. He reads the word coward in their gazes, feels the hurt of their disapproval, but the sting to his pride isn't enough to make him go back.

_He knows he's just another clone, albeit one with a name instead of a number, but the longer they spend dancing around and with each other, the less and less he thinks of Mother and the Planet and all the things he intended to do. He can still hear the urge to destroy and conquer, to make the souls of these wretched people writhe and scream, but the game they are playing is far too much fun for him to pay any attention to it._

**Two leagues you run to me**

He wanted to feel relieved when he could no longer picture Sephiroth's face in his mind, hear his voice or remember the smell of blood and leather and wood smoke, when the taste of true fear in his mouth was nothing but a vague echo of a dream about a nightmare, but the truth is he's petrified and clings harder to the weakening chains that have somehow become comforting rather than hateful during the long years of absence. Sephiroth gives him a purpose, a meaning, and he'd be content to die on the Masamune if only he could feel so alive again.

_Death is a weakness he can't afford to have, an ending he doesn't want, and there's only one tie strong enough to keep him connected to the living. He won't stay dead. He won't. _

**One league you obey me**

The three would scream for Jenova, weep for Mother, beg for their goddess, but Cloud and the Numbers knew there was only one God.

_He's not sure why he wants to live again when deep in his heart he knows it will always end the same way – a giant broadsword cutting him down, an inevitable return to the worlds beyond death. Then he sees Cloud's face, demanding to know what he wants and he can't think why he'd ever let himself leave in the first place._


End file.
